Nursing informatics / Electronic health record (EHR) - Essay Example

Nursing Informatics/Electronic Health Record (EHR) Affiliation: Healthcare providers are primarily concerned with ensuring that patient care is offered at high qualities. This defined by accuracy, effectiveness and efficiency of patient care. To achieve this, Electronic Health Records (EHR) has played a vital role in interconnecting patient information across physicians. This is seen in the contribution of EHR in achieving National Patient Safety Goals set by The Joint Commission. These goals provide a functional basis upon which patient health welfare is promoted and improved for the better.

They address ambulatory health care, behavioral health care, critical access hospitals, home care, general hospitals, laboratory services, long term care, Medicare and Medicaid, and office-based surgeries (The Joint Commission, 2012).In the light of the above goals, EHR aids care coordination by different physicians and healthcare providers. Information exchange is enhanced, making it easier for different physicians and providers to effectively follow-up the care history of patients. Secondly, EHR acts as a point of reference.

Drug interactions can be monitored through these records, and physicians are kept posted by waiting actions and procedures to be undertaken. The availability of patients and physicians data on the EHR database further enhances accuracy in patient care across all the aforementioned point of interest in National Patient Safety Goals. Finally, over and above providing records of clinical patients’ encounters, EHR interface supports other direct or indirect care-related activities that include but not limited to quality management, outcome reporting and evidence-based decision support (Lohr, 2008).

"Mandatory fields" marks areas in the data entry form where the information sought by that field must be provided. Basically, the data and/or information that goes into a mandatory field are critical, and one that must be accounted for when making the data entry. Characterized by special marks like asterisks and followed by brief explanations that show the field is required, mandatory fields have to be complemented before the data entry form is saved. Failure to this, the system indicates where errors in the form have been committed, thereby improving and correcting medical information captured.

This process minimizes or alleviates altogether chances of medical errors.ReferencesLohr, S. (2008). The Evidence Gap: Health Care that Puts a Computer on the Team. New York Times. December 27, 2008.The Joint Commission. (2012). National Patient Safety Goals. Retrieved on 5th June, 2009, from: http://www.jointcommission.org/standards_information/npsgs.aspx